The present invention pertains generally to systems and methods for producing weather reports including current weather conditions and weather forecasts, and, more particularly, to systems and methods for providing such weather reports and forecasts to individuals and businesses, e.g., over computer networks such as the internet.
Most of the current weather and weather forecast information used by individuals and businesses is obtained by them from weather reports provided by local television and radio stations. Such reports are typically prepared by meteorologists at a television or radio station serving a particular geographical area, e.g., a large city and surrounding environs. The reports are based on current weather information available to the meteorologist which may be provided by various local (e.g., local radar) and national (e.g., NEXRAD radar and weather satellite) weather information sources. A meteorologist may also employ computer implemented weather forecasting models in preparing a weather forecast report. A meteorologist may prepare and/or update several such reports throughout the day, and such reports may be provided as part of periodic radio and/or television broadcasts. Such weather reports and forecasts may also be provided in printed form, e.g., in a daily newspaper. A person who is interested in the current or forecast weather conditions for a geographic location accesses such a weather report by tuning in to the television or radio broadcast of the report at the designated time, reading the paper, etc. If severe weather threatens a particular area, an emergency radio or television broadcast may be made to provide such information to the public immediately, and, if necessary, continuously. For example, a television station may provide a graphic indication of the general location (e.g., county) and nature of severe weather, (e.g., tornado, and thunderstorm warnings, etc.) as part of its television broadcast, throughout the period during which severe weather threatens an area.
A severe limitation of such conventional weather reports and forecasts is that they are generalized over a large geographic area and, typically, an extensive period of time. For example, a typical conventional weather forecast will provide predicted high and low temperatures, sky conditions, precipitation, etc., for the day, or for several days, for a particular geographical area, e.g., the city where the television or radio station is located and the surrounding area. However, the actual current and forecast weather conditions for the downtown area of a city, the suburbs, and surrounding rural areas will, of course, be different. For example, different areas in and around the city will achieve different high and low temperatures at different times during the day, and precipitation will reach different points in a television station""s viewing area at different times during the day and at different levels of intensity. A meteorologist""s forecast may indicate that some areas within a television station""s viewing area will receive significant precipitation during the day, while other areas will receive none (e.g., a forecast of xe2x80x9cwidely scattered showersxe2x80x9d). Thus, generalized weather conditions and forecasts for a particular area, e.g., a television or radio station viewing and/or listening area, may be of limited use to any particular individual, especially individuals living or working outside of a central city area, in that such general information will not provide an accurate indication of, e.g., high and low temperatures and sky conditions at any particular time during the day at that individual""s home or place of work, and when, how much, or even if precipitation will arrive at that individual""s home or place of work. Businesses, in particular, may require more specific and detailed weather forecast information. For example, the forecast weather conditions at a particular construction location may be used to decide which activities will take place at that site on a particular day. Generalized weather forecasts for a relatively large area are of limited usefulness to such businesses.
The National Weather Service issues weather forecasts. However, such forecasts are xe2x80x9czonexe2x80x9d forecasts generalized over National Weather Service xe2x80x9czonesxe2x80x9dwhich may cover a hundred miles square or more. Thus, such National Weather Service forecasts also do not provide an individual or business with a detailed or accurate weather forecast for a particular localized area of interest.
Advances in computer connectivity technology have allowed television and radio station meteorologists to provide access to their latest weather condition and forecast reports via computer over the internet at any time desired. Thus, an individual need not try to catch the local television or radio broadcast of a weather report to get the latest weather information. An individual may be able to access weather reports and other outdoor information for both local and remote geographic locations via computer over the internet. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,654,886 to Zereski. Jr. et al. describes a multimedia outdoor system which automatically compiles outdoor information, including current weather conditions, traffic, meteorologist-provided weather forecasts, etc., from a variety of sources and locations, and generates multimedia presentations based on the information for local areas throughout the country. In such a system, weather forecasts, including oral forecast presentations, are manually generated by meteorologists and entered into the system periodically. The multimedia reports generated by the system from such forecasts are stored in a presentation database. An interested user may access the weather report for a local area, such as a city, by accessing the presentation database via computer over, e.g., the internet. However, the individual weather reports and forecasts upon which the multimedia weather reports provided over the internet are based are conventional weather reports and forecasts which are generalized over a wide geographic area and period in time, as described above. Thus, such a system does not provide an individual with a detailed or accurate weather report and forecast for that individual""s particular residence or place of work.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,699, to Baron, Sr. et al. describes a weather alert manager which receives meteorological data, e.g., NEXRAD data, which includes weather information defining storms within a relevant geographic area. The current position and predicted path of a storm is determined from the data and combined with a geographical grid to produce a storm profile indicating storm severity and if a storm is in or is likely to enter any geographical grid area. The storm profile may be distributed to remote units located within a particular grid area to provide storm warnings to individuals in such areas. For example, the remote unit may be a cellular phone or pager which is associated with a particular area, and which receives the storm profile to provide the appropriate warning when a storm is in or approaching that area. Such a system, however, only provides limited severe weather warning information for existing storm cells and does not provide an individual with a detailed and accurate weather report and forecast of general weather conditions, e.g., high and low temperatures, precipitation, wind speed and direction, etc., for that individual""s particular residence or place of work.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,023,223 to Baxter, Jr. describes a plurality of remotely located environmental sensors, e.g., temperature sensors, which are linked to a database server having data tables for holding the environmental data. A user can access the database, via the internet, to search for environmental information of interest. The user may also store a profile on the server which contains predefined environmental threshold triggers. When an environmental condition meets the threshold trigger, the user may be notified, e.g., via e-mail, facsimile message, pager, or telephone. Such a system, however, only provides a warning to a user if current conditions satisfy preselected thresholds and only provides limited environmental information for an individual""s particular area of interest if an environmental sensor happens to be positioned in that area.
Complex weather forecasting models exist which can be used to generate accurate and detailed weather forecast data for narrowly defined geographic locations and periods in time. An example of such a weather forecasting model is the ADONIS model, available from Weather Central, Inc., of Madison, Wis. This model is based on a three-dimensional weather forecasting model of the atmosphere developed originally by Colorado State University and the University of Wisconsin. This model is a non-hydrostatic model, which therefore takes into account changing atmospheric moisture conditions, as well as topography, snow cover, etc., in generating weather forecast data. The model is, therefore, highly accurate. Some weather forecasting models, including ADONIS, are capable of producing weather forecast data with both high geographic and temporal resolution. For example, the ADONIS model may be run to provide detailed forecast data (e.g., temperature, sky conditions, wind, precipitation, etc., for, e.g., up to 25 different vertical levels of the atmosphere) for geographical areas only a few miles across and in half hour increments extending several days into the future. By extrapolation between such closely spaced points for which weather forecast model data is generated, accurate forecast weather conditions for any modeled time at any point in a modeled geographic area may be obtained. A practical limitation of such highly accurate and complex models is, however, the computation resources and time required to obtain such high resolution forecast data. As a practical matter, using current technology, the computation resources and time required to run such a model to generate high resolution forecast data for the entire country would be prohibitive for any single local television or radio station weather operation. In addition, such highly detailed models must be capable of producing thousands of near-real-time individualized weather forecasts in order to be useful to individuals and businesses requiring precise pinpoint forecasts.
The present invention provides a system and method for generating weather reports and the like which are precisely computed automatically for a particular individual or business user""s geographic location, e.g., home or work, and which are provided automatically directly to the individual user or business. The present invention may also provide personalized advanced notice to a user when forecast weather conditions meet a user definable weather condition profile for outdoor activities of interest to the user. In accordance with the present invention, a user establishes an individualized user profile in which the user defines a particular location of interest (e.g., home or work), a contact address (e.g., e-mail address or pager number) to which the personalized weather report is to be delivered, and, optionally, a personalized activity weather condition profile, establishing a preferred weather condition profile for activities of interest. Alternatively, or additionally, an address at which the personalized weather report is to be made available, e.g., a personalized internet web page address, may be, automatically generated and provided to the user. A detailed and accurate weather forecasting model is run to provide high geographical and temporal resolution forecast data. This high resolution forecast data is compared to the individual user profile and a personalized weather report for the particular location, times, and conditions of interest to the individual is provided directly to the individual or business, e.g., via e-mail and/or at the user""s personalized internet web page address. Individual personalized weather reports generated from pre-established user profile information and model forecast data may be generated and delivered and/or updated automatically, without human intervention, e.g., each time the forecast model is run.
An exemplary system for providing personalized weather reports in accordance with the present invention includes a main computer system, which may be implemented, for example, as part of a television or radio station news and weather reporting operation. The main computer system includes weather forecast modeling software for calculating and presenting high geographical and temporal resolution forecast data for a wide, but limited, geographical area, e.g., the geographical area serviced by a television or radio station or newspaper. The weather forecasting model preferably accepts and stores as inputs thereto initialized weather model data, e.g., initial atmospheric condition information, which is generated and provided from a central location to the local main computer system (e.g., by satellite or internet data delivery). Since weather conditions modeled in the main computer are for a geographic area which is limited to, e.g., the television station""s viewing area, and the number of personalized weather reports generated and delivered by the main computer system is limited by the number of customers in a limited geographic area, computation resources and run-times for even very high resolution modeling and report generation are reasonable.
Alternatively, a single computer system may be employed to model weather conditions and generate personalized weather reports for a wider geographic area, such as the entire country. Such a system may be employed for less high resolution modeling. With advances in computer technology, it may be possible to employ a single computer system for high resolution modeling of weather conditions across the entire country. As a preferred alternative, a conventional computer system may be employed to run a high resolution weather forecast model for a limited geographic area, e.g., a local television station""s viewing area, and a less high resolution weather forecast model for areas outside of the limited geographic area. Such a system minimizes computer resource requirements while allowing the vast majority of users in a television/radio market to receive high resolution personalized weather reports for their homes and businesses within the local area, and those with an interest in weather forecasts for other locations, such as, for example, a vacation home located outside of the local area, also to obtain personalized weather reports for such locations. In any case, the forecast model(s) may be run periodically, e.g., twice a day, or each time initialization conditions are received by the computer system running the model(s), to provide high resolution forecast data and personalized reports for the geographical area of interest.
The main computer system includes a user profile generator. The user profile generator provides various user profile set-up menu user interfaces which allow a user to establish a user profile. These menus may be accessed by a user by use of, for example, a personal computer connected to the main system computer over a network such as the internet. Using such menus, a user establishes a personal user profile which includes a particular location of interest, e.g., home, vacation home, or work, for which the user would like a detailed weather report, a contact address, e.g., e-mail address or pager number, to which the personalized weather report is to be delivered and, optionally, a personalized activity weather condition profile, establishing a preferred weather condition profile for activities of interest to the user. Additionally, the computer system may automatically generate a personalized internet web page address at which the user""s personalized weather report will be accessible. The personalized internet web page address may be provided to the user automatically by the computer system, for example, in an e-mail message which is automatically delivered by the computer system to the user""s contact address. All such user profile information is stored in a user profile database.
Each time the high resolution forecast model is run, the resulting forecast data is compared to the user profiles saved in the user profile database and personalized weather reports are generated automatically by a personalized report generator implemented in the main computer system. Automated detailed personalized report generation is possible using a high resolution weather forecast model, such as ADONIS, which provides as an output exact and discreet weather condition readings for specific points in time at pinpoint lat./lon. locations covering an entire geographic area of interest. Such high resolution weather forecast model data may, optionally, be constrained to within certain limits, e.g., using constraints established by a meteorologist, before the model data is used to generate a personalized weather report. The user location provided in the user profile may be converted to a lat./lon. coordinate and used to automatically pull detailed forecast weather conditions for that location from the forecast model data to generate the personalized weather report. If both high resolution (for a limited local geographic area) and lower resolution (for a wider geographic area) weather forecast models are run, the user location is used to determine which resolution of modeled weather forecast data will be employed.
Personalized weather reports are delivered to a user at the contact address indicated in the user profile, and include detailed information on forecast weather conditions, e.g., high and low temperatures, the times those temperatures will be reached, sky conditions, wind conditions, whether or not there will be frost or dew, etc., for the specific user location identified by the user in the user profile. Such detailed personalized weather reports may be delivered directly to a user""s contact address, e.g., in the form of an e-mail or phone message. Alternatively, or additionally, the detailed personalized weather report may be provided as an internet web page accessible at the user""s personalized internet web page address. Preferably, a summary personalized weather report may be provided, e.g., as an e-mail message, to the user""s contact address, with a link to the user""s personalized internet web page provided therein. Thus, the user may be periodically reminded that an updated detailed personalized weather forecast is available at the user""s personalized internet web page address. Preferably, detailed weather forecast conditions for periods (e.g., hours) throughout a day are provided in an easily readable form, such as a tabular form, wherein, for example, high and low temperatures, periods of precipitation, etc., are highlighted. The forecast data is also compared to the personalized activity weather condition profile established by the user, and a notice is provided to the user indicating if and when such favorable weather conditions for the activity will occur at a selected activity location (which may be different from the user""s home or work location).
Further objects, features, and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.